Jace closed the door and walked around the front of the car, trying to decide if it was worth doing what he’d planned. Probably better to play it by ear and see how she reacted.
He opened the driver’s side door and slid in behind the wheel. As he inserted the key into the ignition, Lindsey turned to look at him. He met her eyes, his questioning.
“Thank you for dinner.”
“My pleasure.” It had been, Jace acknowledged.
Once the initial awkwardness had dissipated, he’d found her easy to talk to. Of course, he’d avoided the subject he knew would set off all her defense mechanisms. That wasn’t something he could continue to do, not if he was going to get any of the information he believed Lindsey Sloan could provide. If she wanted to.
Decision made, he put the car into reverse. When he reached the highway, instead of turning back the way they’d come, he headed in the opposite direction. As if on cue, Lindsey offered the protest he’d been expecting.
“This isn’t the way to the stadium.”
She didn’t sound alarmed. It was more as if she thought that he, as a newcomer, might be confused about the location.
“I wanted to show you something.”
“Look—”
“Relax. Your virtue’s safe with me.”
He was no longer entirely sure of that. His original intent in asking to meet Ms. Sloan that day had been strictly business. He’d never expected to be attracted to a teacher.
Auburn hair should mean at least a few freckles. Instead, flawless ivory skin overlay a classically beautiful bone structure. The copper-colored eyes were open and direct.
So why the hell was she available on a Friday night? And, judging by her friend’s eagerness to push her to come with him tonight, most other nights as well?
“It’s been a long week,” she said, her voice no longer relaxed. “I enjoyed dinner, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d take me back to my car.”
“This won’t take five minutes. We’re almost there.”
He knew that as soon as he turned off the highway and onto the two-lane road, she’d recognize their destination. He could imagine her reaction.
Still, this had been the purpose of the entire exercise. He wasn’t about to let the fact that the prelude leading up to the main event had been enjoyable keep him from doing his job.
She didn’t bother to argue, which he also liked. In his experience, it was a rare woman who knew when to keep her mouth shut. The silence lasted exactly as long as he’d anticipated it would.
“I’ve seen the church,” she said flatly.
“I’m sure everyone around here has. I just need to check on something.”
“If this is intended to make me more willing to concede the possibility—”
“It doesn’t matter to me whether you believe what I told you or not. Your opinion isn’t going to change the course of the investigation.”
She turned her head away, looking rigidly out the side window as he pulled into the unpaved area in front of the ruin. He couldn’t tell if she was studying the burned-out shell or if she simply couldn’t stand to look at him.
He stopped the car directly in front of the church, turning off the engine. After a moment the headlights went out. Gradually, in the moonlight, what remained of the church was silhouetted against the lesser darkness behind it.
“Walk with me.”
Without waiting for her agreement, Jace opened his door and climbed out of the car. The sound of its closing echoed through the stillness of the clearing.
He headed toward the ruin, not looking back to see if she was following. Finally—and with a sense of relief—he heard her open and then close her door. Her footsteps made no noise in the soft dirt, but when he turned his head, she was beside him, her gaze focused on the building.
After a moment, she looked up at him. “It’s tragic, and I hate more than you can imagine that it happened. For the people who went to church here and for the rest of us. But I don’t know anything that can help you find out who did this.”
“You may not know that you know.”
“I’ve thought a lot this week about what you said. I looked at every kid who came through my classroom and wondered. And after all that, the answer I came up with isn’t any different from the one I gave you on Tuesday. I don’t believe any of my kids was involved.” She turned to look at the ruin again. “I don’t believe any of them are capable of this kind of…I don’t know. Senseless destruction.”
Except Jace knew it hadn’t been. It had been premeditated and deliberate and very carefully thought out.
That wasn’t what the media had suggested with their spur-of-the-moment copycat theory. At that point he’d seen no reason to correct their impression.
He still didn’t. He had just wanted the people involved to be aware that as far as he was concerned, this wasn’t over.
“Maybe…Maybe they’re through with it,” she went on. “You said they were after the adrenaline rush, but maybe all the attention scared them away.”
“The only thing scaring them away is irregularly spaced patrols of all the other isolated churches in the area.”
“Then why don’t they go somewhere else? There are plenty of places in this part of the state—”
She stopped abruptly, making it obvious she’d made one of the connections he had hoped she would. He didn’t say anything, preferring to let her work it out herself.
She turned to look at him again, the perfect oval of her face revealed by the moonlight. “They have a curfew.”
“And somebody who waits up for them. Maybe even somebody who checks the mileage on the car they drive.”
“The fires are on the weekend because they aren’t allowed out on a school night,” she said, continuing to put it together. “That’s why you’re convinced they’re students.”
It wasn’t the only reason, but it appeared to be enough to make her buy in to the theory that the task force had devised. Once she did, he should be able to use her to get into the heads of her students.
Just as he’d used plenty of other people to succeed at what he did. He’d misled them. Tricked them. Any cop who said he’d never done those things was a liar. They all did them on occasion because it worked. And because it served the ends they sought. The right ends. Justice.
“They’re probably out there tonight,” he said. “Driving around. Thinking about what they could do instead of this.”
“They haven’t done anything since the last one.”
Seven weeks. Or rather seven weekends. They’d all waited, diligently patrolling any spot that was particularly vulnerable. And Lindsey was right. Nothing had happened.
“That doesn’t mean they’re through.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know about the rush. I know it’s addictive.”
“Is that what made you a detective? The rush?”
Maybe it had. Maybe that’s what had kept him at this job when any sane person would have moved on to something else. Anything else. Instead of doing that, he’d come here—a south Alabama county as alien to him as the face of the moon.
At least he was doing something constructive with his addiction, he thought, pulling his mind away from people and places he couldn’t bear to remember. All these punks were doing was destroying.